Photos from Octobers Food Forest Course

Check out some of the photos of the students in action during October’s food forest course. The students from this course designed and planted a new food forest for Chickens and Humans to enjoy near our new community building.

During the first week we learnt about food forests, food forest design and drawing to scale maps. We worked in our winter garden inside our food forest and planted an edible hedge row.

During the second week, we learnt all about plants, trees, guilds and polycultures, we pruned, propagated and and spent time working in our existing food forest

In the third week we finalize the design for the chicken food forest and started preparing the land by digging a swale, put up fencing, composting, preparing mulch and digging holes for trees.

In the last week we planted the food forest and installed irrigation.

On the last two days we all had a go at natural building

Sun Rise on our ‘One Tree Hill’

Plants propagated and ready to plant

New chick is born on the farm

Classroom

Working in the winter garden

Books, design tools and Course booklet ready for the course

Great healthy food every day

Weeding the salad garden

Working in our existing food forest

Compositing worms workshop

Measuring the land to draw a design

Practicing drawing a to scale map

Fresh food from a local organic farmer

Back to eden gardening method, gardening with wood chips

Vemicomosting workshop

Seeds of grains and cover crops ready to plant in the future food forest

Rotavating hard ground to pant cover crops to loosen the soil, fix nitrogen and to collect seeds to feed to chickens

Clearing around existing trees

Map, drawn, trees cut out to scale and ready to design the food forest

Designing the food forest

Above is the Terra one food forest full of guilds and polycultures in 2018, below is the same terrace when we had it planted with annuals

Propagating plants via cuttings

Amazing food every day

Finalising the chicken food forest design

The final design for the food forest we then planted

Measuring a swale on contour

Digging a swale and making it level all the way along

Preparing to plant trees

Moving the chiken tractor daily and then planting seeds direct in the ready beds

Mixing compost and soil for olanting the trees in the food forest

Photo from inside of the chicken house of a compost pile being flipped

Finished putting up a fence around the food forest

Planting the food forest

Propagating herbs through devision and layering for the new food forest

New food forest nearly ciompletly planted

Planting a ground cover in the food forest

One huge bunch of thyme ready to split and plant

Planting trees

Working on irrigation for the new food forest

The salad garden

Last planting in the food forest

Planting edible flowers

Redrawing the map of the food forest on paper by the containor which has a new map of our land

The food forest planted

Natural building with cob plaster

Natural Buildingh with cob plaster

Drawing of the Chicken Food Forest. This shows the plants we planted during the October 2018 Food Forest Course with the spacing the plants will have in 5 years

Making hot compost piles to use to amend the soil in the new food forest